Femtosecond Laser Shatters Viruses

wattrlz writes "In a development reminiscent of nineteenth century pseudo-science, the father-son team of Kong Thon and Shaw Wei Tsen recently demonstrated that the tobacco mosaic virus can be destroyed in vitro by nano-scale mechanical resonant vibrations induced by repeated ultra-short pulses from a laser. The total energy required is reportedly far below the threshold for human tissue damage and the technique should generalize to human pathogens. Cleaning stored blood is one obvious application."

TINY VIRUS SIZED WARNING

[LiquidCoooled]

Do not look into the femtosecond laser with your remaining Capsid.

(and you thought I was gonna say eye...)

Delivery mechanism?

[notnAP]

Assuming the technique also leaves shark tissue undamaged, I got the perfect delivery mechanism in mind.

looks up at ceiling, Koooooooooong!

[jollyreaper]

Kong Thon? There's a man waiting for a video game event to be named after him.

cleaning stored blood?

[OglinTatas]

What? I don't think even the heaviest chain-smoker gets infected with tobacco mosaic virus. I'm sorry, I just don't see the "obviousness" of this application.

Also being played in the lab

[digitaldc]

Shattered

Destroyer

The Safety Dance

She Blinded Me With Science

Re:RTFA

[SolitaryMan]

Your nickname is kinda apt now :)

Re:Danger of re-self-assembly and evolution?

[Greyfox]

So just put the frequencies that kill different viruses into a file and just have the laser cycle through them. The evolution problem could be solved by regularly updating your antivirus files. Naturally most people won't do this and will end up compelled to send junk mail to people...

Re:Cells may be safe, but what about their content

[Setti45]

Being as they are using the resonant frequency to destroy the virus, I imagine the differences in the mechanical structures between viruses and other surrounding material would isolate the applied force to the virus. Disclaimer: This is no where near my field of study.

The Safety Dance

[TheSciBoy]

The list begins and ends with "Safety Dance". Why would you need any other music?! (sings)"Everybody pull up your pants..."

Re:cleaning stored blood?

[Smordnys s'regrepsA]

I know, this is almost as bad as that quack who wanted us to eat moldy bread!

Re:The Safety Dance

[Xiaran]

<Fry>Y'know, that dance wasn't as safe as they said it was.</Fry>

Re:cleaning stored blood?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, Ogg, I can see that your "fire" roasted the mouse. It even tastes good. But how often do we actually eat mice, anyway? Now, if this fire thing worked on mammoths, that might be interesting.

I'm sorry, I just don't see the point of this mouse application.

Obviously...

[Auraiken]

How do you calibrate this magic laser to several unknown viruses at the same time?

With funding of course! :D